Best Olive Oil Banana Bread

Incredibly flavourful and deliciously moist banana bread. Super easy to make, without fancy schmancy ingredients, this may well become your go-to banana bread recipe.

I say fancy schmancy, assuming that everyone has olive oil on hand at home and that this isn’t something of a luxury. You’ll have to forgive me for that, I do live in Greece after all. To be honest I’ve no idea if olive oil occupies a permanent spot in your cupboard or not. I hope it does, as I use it very often in my recipes. It’s definitely worth having, but if it’s really expensive, limit its use to raw dishes (like salads) or baking (when called for obviously). In baking you can usually taste it, so it’s best when its flavour is very very discreet, so small quantities are the trick. I mean, an olive oil-flavoured cake is not particularly appealing is it? (unless there is some feta and tomato in the same cake). It shouldn’t interfere; just lend a delicate fragrance to the end result. This is exactly what happens here, with this banana bread. I used to make it with melted butter, and it was really good, but I think I’ll stick with the olive oil version in future. I find cakes with oil keep better, as they stay moist for longer.

One more thing about the “fancy schmancy” ingredients. Most of my recipes do have them. I am a fan of fancy schmancy. It’s just that sometimes, an all-time classic, in all its glorious simplicity, is much much better. This is one of those times.